


I'll Be The One If You Want Me To

by MyLifeUnedited



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medic - Freeform, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 13:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1186992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyLifeUnedited/pseuds/MyLifeUnedited
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he deserves better than a broken boy from war who couldn't save anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be The One If You Want Me To

__

 

When they get back from war, it's with blood on their hands and scars on their souls. It's true what they say, about war tearing men's souls out, because Roe can't seem to find his.

He sees the war in flashes of blood and snow and pain and tears and anger. He sees cold days and even colder nights and sometimes he can't even find warmth in the the heat of Louisiana, and that scares him more than he'd like to admit.

He thought about being a doctor, once. He was young then, stupid. Granted, he isn't much older than he was before the war started, but it sure as hell feels like he's aged decades.

He thinks of torn limbs and pulsing veins and blood, blood, blood. Blood on his jacket, his pants, his hands. So deep in the creases of his palms he doesn't think he'll ever be able to get it all off. Not all of it.

His parents see it. They see it the moment he steps off the train. It must be written all over his face. He'd gone off to fight a brave man's war, and he'd come back damaged and irreparable.

He thinks of Renee, and how her hands had been soft and cold and comforting. (those thoughts lead to red hair and dark eyes and an easy smile that near the end didn't come quite so easy. he shoves those thoughts away.)

His mother asks if he wants to talk. He offers a sad smile and shakes his head. His father shakes his hand firmly, slaps his shoulder, once, and gives him a knowing look. He never asks.

The few friends he sees when he gets home are all different. Some went to war with him, but their experiences are so different, there isn't really anything to talk about anymore. The few that never left try harder, but it isn't the same.

The Easy boys are the only ones he even knows how to talk to anymore, but he doesn't have any idea how to reach any of them. (save for one, but he can't force himself to do it. _he_ deserves better than a broken boy from war who couldn't save anyone.)

He gets a call from Spina one day. They talk about the weather and family, but there's an air of things left unsaid. They sit in silence for a little while before Spina finally tells him why he called.

"He's not doing well, Gene."

"Who?" Though, he already knows that they're talking about the only one who ever really mattered to him.

"You know who." Spina doesn't say more, simply hangs up the phone and leaves the decision up to Roe. (he knows he'll go, there's no way he can _not._ but he pretends for a moment that he doesn't care. that it doesn't matter, even though this is the only thing that ever _truly_ did.)

He packs a bag to last him a week, just in case, and takes his old, rusted up pickup and drives all night. (he pretends he doesn't have the address memorized, doesn't remember the simple "if you ever want to visit..." on the lips of sunshine and fire.) He drives straight through, his hands clenched around the steering wheel until his knuckles feel like they've been broken, one by one.

He makes it to Philly late afternoon the next day and checks into a small motel. He sleeps a few hours and wakes up from the same dream. (his hands are buried in the body of some unknown soldier. he can't remember the man's name, but he knows he's the only thing standing between this man and death. he fails, because he isn't cut out for this, and he realizes who the soldier is. red hair and dark eyes stare back at him, unseeing in the frozen wasteland around them.)

At ten o'clock, he swallows the last bit of his stubbornness and drives that last distance until he's sitting in front of a small building in the rough streets of Philly. He doesn't realize he's stopped breathing until his vision starts to blur.

He gets out of the truck and stops.

 _There was a moment, in that foxhole, that he though about life after the war. He was fixing up_ his _hand with the last thing that remained of Renee. (and if that didn't speak measures right there, roe didn't know what did.) He'd thought about closing that last distance and covering chapped_ _lips with his own._

 _But he'd stopped himself, because_ he _deserved so much more than that._ He _deserved to go home and marry a girl and have lots of kids and live a happy life._ He _didn't deserve to be dragged down by a medic who'd been the cause of so many boys being sent home in body bags._

Roe knocks, twice, on the door and rocks back on his heels. In the ten seconds between knocking on the door and it opening, Roe thinks of winter and death and everything he wanted to say to that boy on the baseball field, on the truck, on the ship, on the docks. Every confession he'd never admitted.

When the door opens, Roe almost doesn't recognize the man behind the door. His red hair is longer than it had been during the war, his clothes no longer the regulation uniform. But his eyes, those are what scare Roe the most. (because he sees them everyday when he looks in the mirror. he looks like every other guy who came home from war and never truly moved on. _couldn't_ move on.)

They stare at each other for a moment. (roe thinks of shared smiles and exchanged meals and chocolate and blue fabric.)

He isn't sure who moves first, but suddenly, _finally,_ Roe tastes the inside of the boy's mouth and it's everything he's ever wanted and then some.

He knows, of course, that there's so much to be said, so much that he's never let himself say, even on the darkest of nights. But he doesn't want this to end. (roe wonders if the thoughts will ever stop. maybe he'll stop thinking about a bombed out church and broken skin and guns, and it'll be replaced by the smell of cigarettes and the taste of chocolate and mint and the feel of stubble across his cheek and throat.) Yes, there's so much to be said, but Roe thinks it'll keep until morning. But just in case, Roe says the only thing that can sum up everything he's been holding in since Winters told them they could all go home.

_"Babe,"_


End file.
